


oaks take deeper root

by Sentiospoot



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fae, Angus is a good good kid, Fae & Fairies, Fluff, Gen, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Taako Tuesday, Weird Biology, as this goes, or as close as I get to fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-08-27
Packaged: 2020-02-27 17:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18743278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sentiospoot/pseuds/Sentiospoot
Summary: Angus makes a deal to save his grandpa's life, and ends up in the possession of one highly dangerous fae.





	1. Chapter 1

“Angus, are you listening?”

Angus looks up; Mr. Bradson is watching him with bright, worried eyes, tapping a pen on Grandpa’s coffee table. Mr. Bradson is far too broad for Grandpa’s antique chair, and the chair groans under his weight. “I know this is scary,” he says, “But it’s important to talk about it.”

This is Mr. Bradson's fifth visit since Grandpa stopped getting out of bed. Each time, he looks older. More dark purple shadows around his eyes, more lines around the edges of his face when he smiles. Each time he comes equipped with more photos of strangers who he promises could be his family someday. Each time Angus spends less time pretending to listen.

“Please let me tell you about these folks,” Mr. Bradson says with a strained grin. “Your grandfather knows a relative of theirs… They’d be very happy to have you.”

Mr. Bradson is not a bad person, but Angus sort of hates him.

He tells Angus about the family for a while; the mom with her big pinup eyes and the dad with his wide lumberjack shoulders, their goofy-looking son who likes Cabbage Patch Kids and playing with worms when it rains, their too-old dog named Fidget. They sound charming, like every family Mr. Bradson brings to him. In their photos, Angus can see the subtle way they lean toward each other -- the genuine wrinkles of happiness at the corners of their eyes -- this family really loves each other.

Angus pictures himself slotting into their lives as some alien intruder, disconnected from the invisible threads that hold them together. He would not fit. He shakes his head and pushes the photos away.

Mr. Bradson leans forward, resting his arms on his knees. “Angus,” he sighs, “I hope you know I’m trying to help you. You’re a smart kid. You have to understand that it’s important to plan ahead. I don’t want you to have to worry about finding a new home once you’re already dealing with--”

“Sir, I have to use the bathroom,” Angus interrupts. Mr. Bradson sags, rubs his eyes, sits back while the chair underneath him whines torturously. Angus stands up to leave before he can speak.

As he walks into the hallway, ignoring the meek please come back fast behind him, he speeds up with each footstep.

Angus tries to swallow the anxiety that rises in his throat like bile whenever Mr. Bradson visits. It won’t quite leave him. Today, Grandpa hasn’t even woken up; the only sign of life in him is the faint fog of his breaths in the tubes that weave in and out of him. Mr. Bradson says Angus should already be in a new home, but Grandpa would never let him go. Not until the day he isn’t breathing anymore.

Which will be, most likely, any day now.

Angus locks the bathroom door and opens the cabinets under the sink, then the smaller, secret cabinets behind those. Old houses like Grandpa’s are full of secrets. Only Angus knows this house in its entirety, so Mr. Bradson has never found these things: sugar, coins, confetti, glitter, jewels that once belonged to his mother, anything old and pretty from the attic and the dusty hidden rooms that no one else has seen for decades. There are two-dollar things in this pile from the craft store down the road, and there are things that are worth thousands of dollars, but all of them suit the descriptors online and in books:

_Fae have a taste for shiny things… Sugar, crystal, things that are eye-catching… They may come for valuables…_

It has been a while since Angus started looking into this; he started out working from the journals in his grandfather’s study, yellowed books he hadn’t been allowed to touch but which were suddenly unguarded when Grandpa stopped moving. His grandfather had long told him stories about the creatures that lived in the woods out back, but never with the same confidence he had when he wrote about them -- the certainty that they were _real_ and _ancient_ and possessed _unimaginable power_.

The journals were certain, too, that these creatures were unimaginably dangerous, but that’s neither here nor there. If Angus learned anything from his treasured copies of _Caleb Cleveland: Kid Cop_ , it’s that anything worth doing has risks.

Angus pulls his sweater up into a pouch and scoops his treasures inside, out of the hidden cabinet. They jingle loudly when he moves, climbing onto the countertop to open a window. The wind is strong but it will taper away when he reaches the trees. Angus swings his legs over the sill, bracing himself for the impact of a two-foot drop, and then hops down into the yard.

When he lands, some of the glitter in his sweater-pouch spills into the grass. He instinctively runs his foot over it to hide it, grinding dirt and glitter into his sock. He’s more careful picking his way across the yard after that.

He found the spot a while ago, a clearing near the edge of the woods that looks almost totally circular. The journals described a place like this -- the place Grandpa had seen a fairy years ago, when Angus was still too small to hold his head upright. Maybe this is the exact spot. There’s no way to be certain, but Angus has taken bets with worse odds before.

When he enters the clearing now, toting his collected treasures, it’s strangely cold. A chill runs through him and his toes curl into the dirt. He beelines for a shrub at its edge, the same one where he usually dumps his things when he’s collected enough; the pile there is large enough now that he struggles to hide it with the leaves and dirt, the result of weeks of preparation and weeks more of research.

He places his treasures with the others, bending the shrub’s branches to camouflage them from any wayward passersby. The light is already starting to dim, though, so for tonight they should stay safe.

He lingers in the clearing for a while. He gathers kindling from the depths of the woods, tiptoes around patches of mud in search of dry wood and crunchy dead leaves. He falls into a rhythm that carries him into the evening without having to think, to worry about the many things that worry him.

These days, the clearing is more or less the only place where Angus isn’t worried. His grandfather tells him he’s going to get wrinkles at nine years old. At the house, it’s hard to believe anything can fix this, but the clearing makes a believer out of him. The trees whisper with a gentle, unfelt breeze and the shadows are cool and healing. Here, against all of his better judgement, Angus believes in magic and fae who wield it. Angus believes in salvation.

Once it starts to get dark for real, he finally runs back to the house, before Mr. Bradson gets it in his head to look for him. He returns to the living room in a scramble -- pausing to dab the sweat from his face in the bathroom, to pat the remnants of glitter off of his sweater -- and comes back to find Mr. Bradson packing up. He looks up at Angus with a grunt of disapproval. “I have another appointment now,” he says, “I’ll come back tomorrow and we’ll talk, okay?”

Angus nods, smiling politely. “Yes, sir.”

“Did you go outside?” Mr. Bradson raises an eyebrow.

“No, sir.”

“You have dirt on your socks, Angus.”

Angus glances down to his feet, which are coated in mud, dirt and glitter. He wiggles his toes and bows his head sheepishly. “I just went out for a second.”

Mr. Bradson gives him a long-suffering sigh. He walks to Angus and bends down on one knee, trying to meet Angus’s eyes, but Angus stays focused on the floor. His huge hand engulfs Angus’s shoulder when he pats it. “Listen,” he murmurs, “This is hard. And I’m really, really sorry. But -- I’ve been talking to your grandpa’s doctor, and -- well, maybe you should talk to him about this. But we really can’t mess around anymore, okay? Tomorrow, you think you’ll be ready to talk for real?”

“Okay, sir.”

Mr. Bradson looks doubtful, but he clears his throat and stands, taking his briefcase with him. “Alright, then,” he says with a curt nod. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Angus listens to his footsteps disappear as they echo against the house’s thin walls. He stares at his dirty feet on the dirty carpet and wonders if his grandfather has ever been this lonely.

...

Grandpa wakes up three hours later. In the stony nighttime silence of the house, Angus can hear the way the bed creaks when his grandfather turns and shifts, searching for him. Angus’s ears are well-tuned to the sound of machine fans whirring when Grandpa’s breath quickens as he wakes.

He enters the room quietly, but as soon as he’s visible, Grandpa’s eyes sparkle the way he imagines God’s would. He raises his arms, trembling as he reaches for the doorway, and Angus runs to hug him.

“How long have I been asleep?” he croaks. Angus nuzzles into him. Grandpa is sweaty from being in bed so long, and his skin is spongy, sagging over his bones. Still, Angus can feel himself relaxing into the familiar stuttering beat of his heart -- the odd, grassy smell of age and the feather-light touch of skeletal hands.

Angus giggles. “You slept all day. Twenty hours.”

“Ah, that’s no good,” Grandpa mutters with a concerned frown. “Mr. Bradson came today, didn’t he? Did he tell you about the Millers?”

“Yeah.” Angus sits back and wrings his hands, trying not to jostle the IV drip beside him. He came an hour ago to clean things up, but he should have called the nurse to help change the sheets. The room is musty and he sniffs back a sneeze. “I said no.”

“Why?”

Angus shrugs, but his grandfather’s brows are knitted together. He takes Angus’s hand, thumb drawing soft circles in his palm. “I -- oh, I’m tired,” he says, shoulders slumping as he loses his thought. For an instant Angus can see the fear and confusion that strike through him with car-crash suddenness. He breathes slowly, and it hisses through the mask over his face; it’s almost a full minute before he speaks again. “My sweet boy, I wish I could stay with you. But you know that... I can’t, don’t you?”

Angus grinds his teeth through his smile. “We don’t know yet. The doctor says we can still try--”

“No,” Grandpa says, eyes glassy. “No, I -- I know. I can feel it. I’m dying, Angus.” His hand tightens around Angus’s, and Angus squeezes back, feeling his face heat with fear.

“I don’t want to go anywhere else.”

“I know.”

“I’m not ready.”

“I know.” Grandpa sighs, but his grip around Angus’s hand is already slackening. “I’m sorry. I should have...” He smiles slightly, just at the corners of his mouth, and Angus blinks to hold back tears that aren’t coming, trapped behind the ice-cold barrier of grief. “I wish we had started planning earlier, talked about it more… but it’s okay, sugar bug. Someone else is gonna love you every bit as much as I do. Can’t imagine how anyone wouldn’t...”

Angus bites his lip. Grandpa already looks like he’s falling asleep again. His breathing shallows and blends into the mechanical hum of machines.

Every hour Angus checks whether Grandpa is breathing - he knows this breathing like the sound of his own blood rushing through his ears. Now, again, he waits and listens, letting the familiar rhythm of it slow the pounding beats of his heart.

He can’t wait any longer, he decides.

When he’s sure Grandpa is asleep again, he makes a round to check every machine; he checks the bedpan, checks that the window is closed, turns up the air conditioner and leaves a book on the nightstand. With the cell phone in the nightstand drawer, he sends an email to the hospice nurse - she won’t check it until morning, but that’s for the best.

Angus straps on his thickest boots, takes the electric lighter from the kitchen and marches into the woods; this late at night, the moon is directly overhead and gives everything a ghostly white glow. His clearing is nearly shining in it, illuminated through the wide gap in the trees.

He kicks his tinder into a pile recklessly close to the treeline. There is no invitation to hurry like a threat.

He scoops the hidden pile of treasures into his arms, gripping them like a security blanket, and clicks the lighter on. It glints in the moonlight like glass. Angus wraps his jacket tighter against the midnight breeze, then drops the lighter into the kindling, listening to the fire crackle to life like a faint growl.

...

When the fairy appears - first nothing, and then everything at once, as if it had always been there - Angus feels an overwhelming urge to turn around and go home.

The fire at his feet had spread so far he couldn’t douse it if he tried; it licked at the bases of the trees, leaving black streaks up their trunks. He’d been forced to step back a few times as the flames crawled along trails of dead grass, seeking out any weakness in the forest’s underbrush. In a few more minutes, he would have been forced to retreat and call 911, declare the whole ordeal a loss before the fire ate up everything.

When the fairy appears, the fire is gone. The only remaining trace is the white smoke licking around the fairy’s heels.

The creature in front of him is otherworldly; the forest seems to ripple at its edges. The fairy stares at Angus with dark, cavernous eyes, and its ears twitch toward Angus with interest, long and pointed and almost thin enough to see the veins through. When Angus sees its teeth, milky-white and needle-sharp, lacing together in a zipperlike row, he thinks distantly of stories of fae who eat children rather than steal them away.

“Hey, kid,” the fairy says, tilting its head. It blinks, dozens of eyelids flashing in rapid succession. “What the fuck are you doing to my woods?”

Angus hugs his treasures and rolls his shoulders back. “I -- I want to make a deal,” he says.

The fairy laughs, a high, harsh sound. “Shouldn’t go around saying shit like that,” it purrs, but it’s coming closer. “Could get yourself in trouble, around here.”

“I want a deal.” Angus hisses in a breath through his teeth and the fairy is close enough now to hear it. Angus can see the faint, shimmering outline of wings curving out of its back, nearly invisible.

“I don’t usually deal with humans.” The fairy grins. “But for a bold, enterprising little thing like you, I’ll bite. What have you got to offer?”

Angus holds out his treasures like an offering. The fairy leans in close, brows furrowing, and digs through the pile with one long finger. It looks up to meet Angus’s eyes. “What the fuck do you want me to do with a bunch of your garbage?”

“It’s -” Angus opens and closes his mouth, searching for words. Words, that is, other than _fuck_ , which is what he would say if he wasn’t a polite, well-raised kid. “This stuff is - it’s really valuable, sir, some of it is real gold - there are diamonds in here -”

"Yes, and _glitter_ , I can see.” The fairy snorts and pushes back the brim of a large, purple, pointed hat. “What am I supposed to do, pawn it? I can transmute gold, little man. You’re gonna have to make this worth my while.”

Angus clenches his fists, the treasures in his hands clinking together like chains. The fairy’s right. What does a fairy need jewelry for? They can make whatever they like, they have _magic_. There’s nothing Angus could give this creature that it can’t get for itself; no material thing, at least. No, fairies only come to humans for entertainment, admiration, mischief, children. Children?

The fairy is already flickering out of his vision. There’s no more time.

“Take me,” Angus cries out in a surge of bravery. The flickering immediately stops; the fairy’s teeth flash through the smoke. “You can do whatever you want.”

“Oh, now that’s an offer,” the fairy says, voice bouncing cartoonishly. It bends down, carding its hands through Angus’s curls. He feels the faint scratch of claws against his scalp and shivers. “Yes, I think I could be amenable to that. Let’s go ahead and do it. What’s your price?”

Angus swallows. “My grandpa is very sick,” he murmurs. The fairy coos, a display of sympathy so blatantly fake it’s almost mocking. “I - I want him healed. Not, like, made immortal or anything, just - I want him to live a while longer. A few more years.”

“Right, cool, sure, you got it.” The fairy raises Angus’s head by his chin, glances over his face with pupil-less eyes. “Yeah, this is a good idea. A great idea. Okay, you got yourself a deal.”

Angus blinks. He digs his heels into the ground to keep himself together a bit longer. The idea of becoming fae property is - a bad one, undeniably, but better than doing nothing, waiting at home for grandpa to die and leave him alone. After all, if his books have taught him anything, it’s that sometimes a hero has to improvise.

The fairy holds out a hand to shake. “Your name?”

Angus takes its hand. “Caleb Cleveland, sir.”

The fairy’s grin widens impossibly, its hand clenching hard around Angus’s. “Now that’s a non-starter, my dude,” it tells him. “But I do appreciate the guts in trying to cheat me, I really do. Now your real name?”

That’s it, then. He’s been outdone. No amount of cleverness, apparently, no amount of plucky precociousness can undo being nine years old and desperate.

Outdone for _now_ , Angus promises himself.

“I’m Angus McDonald,” he says, and he can feel the change immediately, like something deep inside of him has escaped with the words. He swears he can see it floating from his mouth in an inky black smoke, can see the fairy breathe it in. His limbs feel lighter. But at the core of him, there’s an unpleasant heaviness in his spine.

“Now give me the gold.”

“What?”

The fairy smiles wickedly, eyes reflecting the light like a cat’s. “You’re mine now, Angus McDonald,” he says, “So give me your stuff.”

Angus jaw goes slack. Still, he feels the vague compulsion tingling in his arms; there’s power in a command from this fairy, now. So he holds out everything he’d brought, and bites his tongue as the fairy sweeps it all into an absurdly small bag on his belt.

The fairy wraps its hand around Angus’s wrist and yanks him toward the woods. Angus yanks back, startled. “Wait, can I have a minute to -- to say goodbye?”

“No.” The fairy rolls his eyes. “C’mon, time to go, I have shit to do.”

“Please?”

The fairy raises an eyebrow, unimpressed. “Fine. A minute. I’m counting, though, for real, so be speedy.”

Angus nods, spinning on his heel to face the house; they’re barely past the treeline, and he can still see the blink of machines from Grandpa’s room. He lurches toward it automatically, but the fairy is still holding him by the wrist, so he just sways toward the house that has been his whole world for nine years and tries to believe he will be back.

He isn’t sure how long he stays that way, but the shadows have shifted a bit by the time the fairy pulls him back toward the woods. Angus allows himself to be wordlessly dragged away, barely shivering in the wind. The fairy’s claws prick against his skin.

As he follows the fairy deeper into the woods, he can barely catch the world undulating around him, at the barest edges of his vision; the trees slowly become too thick for the light to penetrate, blanketing them in darkness. The fairy whispers something and its hat glows, golden, allowing Angus to see the few feet in front of them. It moves quickly, the underbrush twisting out of its path, and Angus stumbles to keep up.

After a while, they come to a new clearing; far deeper than Angus thought the woods would go, the clearing sprawls around a single, huge, reddish-brown tree, with branches that extend like arms toward the sky. Angus is certain they’ve passed into some other plane of reality by this point. There is no way something like this, something this massive and perfect, existed in his woods and he failed to find it.

Of course, this isn’t his woods really. It’s theirs. They’re just finally allowing him to see it.

The fairy drags him to the base of the tree and taps a long finger against the bark, which seems to make the whole thing shudder. The tree opens up for them - a gaping gash in the trunk, splintering at the edges to create what looks uncomfortably like _teeth_. Angus can feel the pull of magic drawing them inside. The fairy places a hand on his back and shoves him forward, into the blackness.

Angus winces - he feels very small, hyper-aware of every nerve of his body. He can’t see anything but he pinches his eyes shut on instinct.

When he opens them, he’s standing in a cottage. There’s a gentle fire going and a smell like someone baking. It’s warm, it’s weird, it all seems to be made of wood and moss and leaves - furniture growing out of the ground, some of it even blooming with flowers, knick-knacks of gold and silver and gemstone scattered through this main room. The fairy’s odd, lilting voice calls out from behind him: “Lulu, you will _never_ guess what I’ve got.”

“You figure out the racket out by the road?” a new voice responds. A new fairy appears, poking out from a nook near the fireplace, absolutely identical to the first - big black eyes, ears sticking upright, this time with two long braids framing either side of its face. The new fairy scans its eyes over Angus and gasps. “Oh, Gods, tell me you didn’t steal a human kid.”

“Nope. Made a deal fair and square,” the fairy states matter-of-factly. Its hands fall possessively over Angus’s shoulders, keeping him close. “Listen, my darling sister, wind beneath my wings, light of my life - chill out, it ain’t no thing.”

“You’re an idiot. This is absolutely already a _thing_.”

She walks closer, then, her head tilting like a curious lizard, eyelids flickering by in milky white membranes. She bends down to cup Angus’s face and he tries to smile at her, but it feels closer to a grimace. “What are you planning to do with him?” she asks.

The fairy squeezes his shoulders. “Gonna make a changeling.”

“Do you even know how to do that?”

“Not yet.”

“He’s so cute,” she coos, fingers tapping absently against Angus’s cheeks. His stomach growls and her ears perk completely upright. “Oh, he makes weird noises. Taako, I love this thing, I’m already changing my mind. _Look_ at him.”

The fairy - Taako? - snorts. “I knew you’d come around, babe.”

Angus cranes his neck, trying to look past them around the cottage; the opening where they entered doesn’t seem to exist anymore, at least not visibly. There are no windows, either, just open doorways barely obscured by curtains of beads and glass and gems. It will be very bad news if there’s no way out of here without Taako’s help.

His stomach growls again, and the two fairies stare down at him. “He, uh, wasn’t doing that before,” Taako comments.

Angus shifts awkwardly. “I’m sorry, I’m just hungry.”

Taako blinks, then grins, eyes dilating and shining with light like spilled oil. “Of course, right, yeah, humans need to eat. Like, all the time, right? Every day?” Angus nods, and Taako trills delightedly, a loud, inhuman noise. “Right on. I’ve got something baking already -- that’ll work, right? What do you eat?”

“Pizza?” Lup suggests.

Angus smiles. “Yes, ma’am, pizza is alright, but not very healthy.”

“Well I can’t imagine cookies are bad for anyone,” Taako announces, and Angus’s attention is suddenly drawn back to the pleasant, sweet smell that’s been surrounding them since they came in - gingersnaps. He shouldn’t have sugar late at night, but then again Grandpa will never know that he did. And he _is_ awfully hungry.

“Cookies are great for everyone,” Angus agrees. Then Taako has him by the wrist again, yanking him away from Lup and toward one of the doorways.

Lup laughs, ears flicking playfully. “Lucky that you gotta eat,” she says to Angus with a wink. “You’ve already won his heart if you’ll eat his cooking.”

Taako scoffs but ignores her. He leads Angus into a dimly-lit kitchen, cramped with items that aren’t really recognizable as kitchenware -- strange humming boxes, holes in the walls glittering with faint, purple light. The room smells strongly of spices and sugar. There are dried herbs hanging from the ceiling like silent chimes.

Taako reaches into a box and pulls out a tray of cookies, as promised, dropping them on the table. He puts his hands on his hips. “That’ll be good enough, yeah? Fuck, I feel like a goddamn Keebler elf.”

“Yes, sir,” Angus chirps. He stands on his tiptoes to take a cookie, and Taako preens with satisfaction. He walks off, leaning in the doorway to chatter with his sister, and Angus bites into the cookies with an approving hum.

At the very least, he’s likely to be physically safe for now. His captor doesn’t seem malicious, not outwardly, as long as Angus remains a toy and not an obligation - but the time where his novelty outweighs the burden of caring for him is limited. The cottage is homey, but it isn’t necessarily safe. He needs to start working out his next move. Preferably before Taako’s plans come to fruition.

_Gonna make him a changeling._

He feels suddenly nauseated, and steps away from the tray of cookies to lean against the wall. His plan worked, but he’s achingly aware that the fear and worry hasn’t ebbed at all - and oh, how selfish, to not even be happy that Grandpa is safe. That is, if Taako properly upholds his end of the deal, but that remains to be seen.

What he does know - the knowledge that settles heavy and stabbing in his stomach - is that everything will be different now. Grandpa may live, but he probably won’t ever see it. With the adrenaline wearing off, the reality of what he’s done begins to settle in his bones, along with the frightening realization of what it means for the future.

“Oh, shit, what’s happening now?” he hears Taako ask. He ducks his head, trying to avoid letting the fairies see the his face reddening, tears dripping over his cheeks. He holds his breath but can’t bite back a loud sob.

“Fuck,” Lup snaps. “Taako, what did you put in the cookies?”

“Nothing! There was nothing!”

“He looks terrible, they made him sick -”

“They _didn’t_!”

Lup hisses, and suddenly Angus feels her hands on him, pulling his face up to look at her. She examines him critically and sighs. “Never mind,” she murmurs, “Sorry. I think he’s just… distressed. What do we…?”

Taako squats down next to her, also watching Angus with a mixture of curiosity and concern. “He’s crying,” he points out. “Lup, this is your type of thing, you talk to him,”

“Oh no,” Lup argues back, “You brought him home, he’s your job.” Taako winces.

“Fine. Angus, what’s wrong?” he asks, “You still hungry? Or, uh, need to sleep or - need water or something?”

Angus hides his face in his hands. He’s already a problem. Whatever time he has, this will only take away from it. “I’m sorry,” he whispers. His breathing is ragged and hitched, but he can’t calm it. “I’m sorry, I just miss my grandpa. I’ll stop.”

The fairies are quiet for a moment. Then Angus feels himself being lifted by his armpits, and he’s startled out of crying. It’s been years since Angus got too big for his grandpa to carry him around anymore, but for Taako it seems more-or-less effortless, and he’s tucked into one arm with ease. Taako’s body is hot to the touch, like a dark stone left in the sun, and Angus relaxes against it instinctively.

Taako pulls off his big pointed hat and drops it onto Angus’s head, heavy and warm. He attempts to adjust it with his free hand, but there’s no stopping it from slipping over Angus’s eyes. He huffs out a laugh. “You look ridiculous,” he says.

“I-I’m sorry, sir-”

“Human kids have to sleep at night, don’t they?” Taako interrupts. He carries Angus back through the doorway curtain, which pokes against his skin like Taako’s claws at his back. “Let’s go find somewhere for you to sleep.”

Taako puts him down in a chair by the fireplace, made of small intertwined branches. Angus expects it to be uncomfortable but the wood is so worn from use, it’s actually very smooth, and the branches are weirdly springy under his weight; it’s absolutely cosy, and just big enough for Angus to lay on his side, rolled into himself like a cat. Taako puts him there and seems to assess the situation, then nods.

“That looks pretty good, I think,” he says. “Yeah, alright, Taako once again turns out to be awesome at everything. Fantastic.”

Angus stares up at him. Taako’s fingers twitch in the air and the fire hisses, heating up by degrees. Angus is drowsy from the food, and the fire, and the crying, but he ignores the way his eyelids droop. “Um, thank you very much, sir,” he whispers.

Taako smiles, pushing his long hair over his shoulder with satisfaction. “No big deal, little man. From now on, no crying in my kitchen.” He stoops down to wipe away some of the tear stains with his sleeve, then hums happily, cocking his head. “Look at that. I did it. Gods, I’m fucking good.”

Angus holds back from the temptation to reach out and touch Taako’s ear. However fascinating the texture looks, it wouldn’t be worth potentially causing offense. “Sir, when you say ‘changeling,’” he whispers, “Are you gonna make me a fairy like you?”

“Not really,” he says offhandedly. “I think you’re too old. But we’ll see how close I can get, hm? I’m sure I’m powerful enough to make you pretty fucking magical. I don’t think anyone will be able to tell the difference.”

“Why?” Angus asks. Taako frowns. “I don’t mean to be rude, but how does that benefit you, sir?”

“To tell the truth - well, I mean, I have to,” Taako says, “It doesn’t especially interest me. But no one’s managed for a long, long time. If I can do it, it’ll be pretty fucking impressive, you know?” Taako’s eyes are alight, and Angus swears he can see actual stars sparkling in their depths. “You’re gonna be a real accomplishment, Angus McDonald. A genuine work of art by the world’s greatest.”

“Oh,” Angus whispers. Taako readjusts the hat one more time and then stands.

“Go to sleep,” he says, “We have lots to do when the sun rises.” With a breath, the fire fades to glowing embers, and the room is bathed in shadows. The warmth lingers, though. Angus wriggles to get comfortable in his jeans and falls asleep to the sound of fairies whispering, voices lilting, tingling in his ears like magic.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> been forever since I posted a fic so uhh... we'll see how this goes  
> I love one man and it is Taako  
> I have a huge outline for this so hopefully I'll be updating pretty regularly! but I know those are famous last words lol  
> drop a comment or a kudos if you wanna make me cry <3


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol promise this fic was never abandoned, but I didn't have a computer until last week T_T sorry for the long wait  
> anyway huge thanks to everyone for the positive feedback! and shoutout to my local PC방 for letting me camp out and work there :)

When Angus opens his eyes in the morning, an unfamiliar face is inches away, watching. He shoves blindly against it and screams. 

The new presence reels backward, startled. Taako snickers. “He’s got some lungs on him, huh?” Taako says, and Angus blinks, bringing the face in front of him further into focus. It’s another fairy - this one less otherworldly than Taako and Lup, almost mistakable for a normal man on the street, but still given away by the long ears pressed flat against his head. He watches Angus with soft, worried, human eyes.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to, uh, scare you,” he says. He shuffles his feet, his translucent too-big wings shuddering almost imperceptibly behind him. “Your name is Angus, right? You’re Taako’s little boy.”

“Yes, sir.”

The fairy’s wings twitch and he looks over his shoulder to Taako. “I thought you said the kid was two or three.”

“Yeah,” Taako says, “I mean, I was eyeballing it but something like that.”

“Taako, this boy is - two or three _times_ that age. That’s a big difference for humans. How old are you, Angus?”

“Um, nine years old, sir.”

“ _Taako_ ,” the fairy repeats, drawing out the name in his frustration, “This is _impossible._  A toddler, maybe - and it would be a big maybe - but a kid this old? You can’t do it. Hell, trying might kill him.”

“Well, if it were simple, it’d hardly be worth trying,” Taako tells him, teeth bared like an angry dog. The fairy runs an anxious hand through his short hair.

“He’s cute, though, isn’t he?” Lup cuts in. Her pitch-dark eyes are scrunched with amusement. She floats closer to ruffle the fairy’s hair. “Listen, I’ve tried to talk Taako out of this already, but you know how he gets. You just gotta accept that it’s happening.”

The fairy heaves a long-suffering sigh, but Lup’s attention shifts to Angus. “Kiddo, this is Barry,” she says, “He used to be human too, so we asked him to come check on you.”

“I was human when I was an infant, yeah,” Barry tells her sternly, “Not _nine_. Oh, man, that’s like a tenth of his lifespan.” He shakes his head and adds, “This is psychotic. Should’ve done this kid a mercy and just eaten him.”

Taako laughs, but Angus recedes into the chair. He grasps for courage from somewhere and - his hands curl instinctually around the velvet brim hanging low over his eyes. He still has the hat. The thick weight of it comforts him, in a strange way; perhaps it’s the cold glow of magic that envelopes his hands and slows the panicked beat of his heart. “Shut up,” Lup says with a snort, “Look, you’re scaring him.”

Barry looks down at him sheepishly. “Oh, uh, sorry,” he says, “I’m just kidding. No one’s gonna eat you.”

“Hey, don’t go making any promises,” Taako warns with a smile, tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth. “Last time I checked, this is all twin turf. You don’t get a vote in what I do around here.”

Barry frowns. “Fine, sorry, it’s not my business,” he admits, but his jaw tenses impatiently. “But really, come on, you won’t hurt him. Don’t torment the poor thing.”

Angus freezes, brain snagging on the phrase: _twin turf_. Of course he understands himself as Taako’s property, in a rudimentary way - his name functions somehow as a contract that binds him to Taako - but if there is a physical space, a limited area, which is Taako’s domain  - it may offer him a glimmer of hope. If he got into another fairy’s territory, would it change things? Would Taako’s power be restricted there? But then, how can he get outside to find out? He should investigate further before this whole situation goes sideways -

“Angus?” Taako barks, snapping his fingers. “Are you paying attention? Jeez, keep up.”

“What?”

“I said, are you hungry?” He draws out every word, voice dripping with sarcasm, and Angus cringes. “Barry said you need to eat a few times a day, so I made some stuff, but it’s magic so it won’t keep long.”

Angus nods. “Yes, sir, I’m hungry.”

“Then get your ass into the kitchen,” Taako tells him, but this time he cracks a smile. Still, when Angus stands up, the hat reappears on Taako’s head as if it had always been there. Angus reaches up to find it replaced with a large paper cone - a dunce cap.

Lup barks out a laugh. “Koko, you’re horrible.”

He doesn’t catch whatever witty retort that earns because he’s already drawn, zombielike, toward the kitchen, where the tempting smell of Taako’s food is suddenly the only thing on earth Angus can bring himself to care about. When he enters, he has to pause for a moment to drink in the scene; counters overflowing with food, all of it picturesque, pancakes and pastries and bacon and omelets. Taako doesn’t seem to have any sense of how much Angus will eat, but Angus can’t complain. This is more fresh food than he has ever seen in his life.

He reaches for the nearest plate of pancakes and realizes there aren’t any forks. Or chairs. Or free table space. Taako also, apparently, doesn’t have a great sense of  _how_ people eat food.

Angus glances down the counter, hums thoughtfully, and picks up one of the few pancakes with a limited amount of topping - they’re mostly drenched in a colorful syrup. With no small amount of apprehension, he stacks an omelet perfectly on top. He folds the pancake in half, delicately, then tucks a few strips of bacon carefully into its fold - and in a moment of mad hedonism, one of the small pastries, too - then takes a large bite out of his monstrosity.

It’s glorious. Angus decides that without parents or grandparents to watch reckless kids like him, civilized society would be dust. 

Angus’s pancake taco is not an easy thing to eat, but he nibbles through it over the course of a few minutes, standing in the center of Taako’s cramped kitchen. Taako left a wicker bowl of water for him at the far side of the room, and though Angus finds it somewhat demeaning to be fed from a bowl, he’s unspeakably grateful for it after a few bites.

He’s halfway through his second breakfast abomination when Taako saunters into the room. Angus stuffs the remainder into his mouth guiltily, then coughs through his attempt to swallow the whole thing half-chewed. 

Taako sighs dramatically, draping himself over the counter. “You can take that off,” he says, gesturing to the dunce cap. Angus startles - he’d forgotten about it, but he immediately removes it and balances it on an empty plate. As soon as he drops it, it vanishes. “Gods, that’s a sorry sight. I didn’t think you’d just stand here looking dumb in the damn thing. Is the food good, at least?” 

“Yes, sir,” Angus tells him, “It's amazing.”

“Well eat as much as you want,” Taako says with a smug smile. “Though with all the sleeping and eating I dunno when we’re gonna find time for all the fun changeling stuff.” 

“How does that work?” Angus asks, nibbling on one more bite of bacon. Since it’s here. “Do I have to do something, or…?”

“I’m still figuring it out too,” Taako says. He straightens, looking Angus up and down critically. “From what I read, some of it will come just from being here. If you were a baby that’d probably be most of it.” 

“But since I’m not, you have another plan?” Angus guesses. Taako grins, needle-thin teeth interlacing and bulging from his mouth.

“Smart cookie,” he says. “Yes, I think so. I wanna try teaching you some magic. Sound like fun, little man?”

When Angus was younger, he conquered the abyss-dark passageways of his grandfather’s house through rigorous exploration. He filled notebooks with sketches of the creatures lurking in the woods outside his window, memorizing their movements and the shapes of their shadows in the grass. He catalogued the books scattered throughout his grandpa’s myriad shelves and slowly worked through them, one sentence at a time, sounding out words under his breath. The magic lingering around him in the air suddenly takes the form of new knowledge to covet and Angus can already feel himself salivating. “Yes, it really does,” he agrees, bouncing on his heels, and Taako’s wings flutter delightedly. 

“Then let’s do this,” he says. He reaches out and lays his hand on top of Angus’s head, buried in his neat curls. “I’m gonna transfer some of my magic to you. Won’t last long, but it should be enough for you to practice a little.”

Angus smiles, genuinely, for the first time since he agreed to their deal. Taako coughs, avoiding his eyes.

Angus feels something cold radiating from Taako’s hand, almost like Taako has cracked an egg over his head. He thinks for a dreadful moment that maybe Taako  _has_ cracked an egg over his head and this is all a mockery of him, and the thought makes his eyes sting, but when Taako pulls back and Angus pats the top of his head, there’s nothing there.

It was really magic, then.

The thick, cold feeling drips down his throat and settles into his chest, gripping and unpleasant. Taako picks up a fork from the table and holds it out. “This one’s simple,” he explains plainly, “We’re gonna try a mage hand. It’s the first thing I learned, and it’s super mega useful. I want you to take this from me, but don’t move your body at all, okay?”

“I’m not sure I understand, sir.”

Taako pauses, ears twitching. “In your mind,” he tries again, more slowly, “Think about moving your arm and taking the fork. Go through every mental process you would if you were gonna really take it. Just don’t actually move.” 

Angus tries. He closes his eyes, straining with the focus, but he can’t capture the right mindset - his thoughts turn blank or his arm twitches and the whole effect falls apart. After a moment he opens his eyes hopelessly. “Sir, I don’t think I can do this.”

Taako shakes his head. “You can. Don’t overthink it, just do it.”

Angus grits his teeth. He can feel the weight of Taako’s eyes on him. He focuses hard enough to feel the tingle of a headache blooming, and finally there’s a puff of something emanating from his hand - but it buds off of him and drops to the floor, a grotesque impression of a hand, mutilated and gnarled inside of itself. It writhes violently. 

Taako pedals back a few steps. “Fuck, Angus, kill it!” he snaps, and Angus stomps on the hand as hard as he can, dissipating it almost instantly.

Angus looks up, eyes wide with shock. “I - I’m sorry,” he whimpers. Taako stares down at him, equally wide-eyed.

“Are you kidding?” he says, “That was awesome! That was great! You cast it, that was a hand - I mean yeah it was a little fucked but it was your first try and you cast it!” He holds up a clawed hand, grinning.

Angus blinks. He cast it. He cast a magic spell, out of his hand, imperfect but real - the magic still tickles on his palm, pins and needles. He stares at his hand in awe, flexing his fingers. 

“Come on, don’t tell me humans have stopped doing this already,” Taako says. Angus returns his attention to the fairy in front of him. He reaches up to smack the hand Taako holds up for him. “Let’s try it again, then,” Taako says, “See if you can fully separate the fingers this time.”

...

Angus sits where Taako left him, hours ago, in front of the low fire in the living room. It’s hard to tell the time without windows, and the firelight stays dim all day, but Angus has nothing to do but count as the minutes tick by. The twins left together shortly after Angus’s magic lesson, tittering about “errands” and “friends” and “important shit” in identically dismissive tones. 

Angus hadn’t pressed for an explanation, whined like a child or begged to come along. He hadn’t demanded to know what kind of errands an immortal being could possibly have. Instead he allowed his captors to leave him in their small, sparse home and stayed obediently put, compelled by whatever magic gripped him with the spoken command of his name. He digs his nails into his palms and waits for their reappearance.  

Being kidnapped is boring. Angus stretches his hands toward the fireplace and silently laments that he hadn’t brought any books. Though the tree has a library, it’s been occupied all day with Barry, who hasn’t made a sound since the twins left in the morning. If Angus is uncomfortable with Taako and Lup, he’s doubly uncomfortable with Barry, who lacks their strange, calming magic thrall and whose ghostly presence can barely be felt, easy to forget in the silent stillness of the afternoon.

All the same, when Barry finally pokes his head out of the doorway, Angus nearly cries with relief.

“Hey, kid,” Barry calls out, his cheeks dusted with a sheepish pink. “I, uh, forgot to - I think I forgot to feed you lunch. Sorry.”

“I’m not hungry, sir,” Angus promises. 

Barry nods, then retreats almost instantly back to the library - Angus jolts upright to call for his attention. “Um, sir?” he squeals, and Barry returns to look at him, brows furrowed. “Is it okay for me to come sit with you?”

Barry stares thoughtfully at his shoes, but he shrugs. “I guess,” he says. So Angus pushes himself to his feet and follows Barry into a cramped, hot room, filled with hoarded rolls of paper, loosely-bound books and notepads. Some of it seems scavenged from the human world - yellow legal pads, greying composition books - but most are bizarre, razor-thin strips of parchment, stacked and woven between each other in some indeterminable pattern. The papers brush against Angus’s arms as he squeezes through the doorway, raising goosebumps.  

The room is barely lit by the fire from the center of the house and lacks the eerie magical glow of the kitchen; Angus adds  _dark vision_ to his internal catalogue of fae features. He tugs gently at the hem of Barry’s shirt. “Sir, um, could I have some light, please?”

Barry hums absently and complies, conjuring a small blue ball of light with a slow motion of his hand. Then he settles back at his desk, spreading his near-invisible wings wide to compensate for the back of his chair, and Angus is left to sit at his side in one of the few open spots on the floor. 

He watches Barry pluck a quill from some unseen corner of the desk - equally crowded by papers and books - and speaks up before Barry’s attention can be drawn away again. “What are you working on?”

Barry’s head snaps back to him, startled, as if he’d already forgotten Angus’s presence. “Um, this is - actually I’m making an index for Lup. Gathering all our resources about, ah, the changeling process, you know. For you.” He puts his quill to the side again. “This must all be pretty confusing for you. It is for us, too. Frankly, this is a really unusual situation, and there isn’t much information to go on. It’s going to be a lot of work.”

Angus nods. “So there must be a good reason to do it.”

Barry snorts. “I don’t think there’s a good reason for anything Taako does.” He shakes his head, then smiles lopsidedly. “The sooner you understand that, the easier your time here will be, Angus McDonald.”  

Angus rolls his tongue in his cheek as he thinks. He reaches out to stroke the blue light that floats beside his head, and curls his fingers at its gooey, unpleasant texture. “You were human once, too, right, Mr. Barry?”

“Yes.”

“When you were a baby?”

“Yes.”

“Back then, when other people were making changelings,” Angus asks carefully, “What was the reason?”

“It wasn’t malicious or anything, really,” Barry tells him, sagging in his chair. He’s pressed so close to the books on his desk that his breath makes the pages flutter. “Changelings are just one way for fae to make more fae. It’s like… having children. Sort of.”

“So the person that changed you,” Angus murmurs, tilting his head. “Were they like...”

“Like a parent? Sure.” Barry hums, then backtracks, rolling his shoulders casually. “I mean, I guess I wouldn’t know one way or the other. I’ve never been unhappy, though. Never wanted for much."

“Oh.”

“You already have a family, though, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir.”

Barry huffs, lips pressing into a thin line. He doesn’t answer. So Angus ignores him, moving toward the piles of loose notes and books stacked against the walls, shoved into cubbies and tucked into thick dents in the tree; he glances back, but Barry doesn’t seem bothered by the premise of Angus digging through these things. 

He runs his hand along a pile of books near the door, feeling the ridged patterns of their spines. None of them are marked, but one toward the top is so stuffed with notes its spine strains to hold it closed. He watches Barry as he extracts it from the pile, but there’s no negative reaction, so he settles it into his lap.

Angus opens the book eagerly, but the symbols here are unfamiliar to the point of being indiscernible. “Is this…” Angus murmurs, squinting, “Coded? Another alphabet maybe?”

“Oh, sorry,” Barry says, wings twitching clumsily and knocking some stay papers from his desk. “Jeez, forgot about - that’s in Primordial. It’s a fae tongue, Lup likes to keep the library in, you know, her native language.”

Angus blinks up at him. “Could Mr. Taako teach me to read it?

“Uh, no, he - he doesn’t read.” Barry scratches the back of his head awkwardly. “You could maybe ask Lup? Nah, you don’t even need to worry about it,” he decides. He shuffles his notes and hunches closer to his reading. “She’s already gonna be swamped figuring out this shit for Taako - it’s a little over your head anyway, kid. The writing is really only for academia. If you wanna learn to speak it, maybe Taako will get around to it.” 

Angus frowns. Barry doesn’t look his way, though, so he peels some of the pressed-in notes from the pages and crumples them to hide in his pockets. He’ll decipher them, if he can find some kind of Rosetta stone. He has nothing but time.

“That would be really nice of him.”

“Yeah, so it’s not likely,” Barry mutters. 

The amount of knowledge kept in this back room is absolutely immense. Like all life-changing information, Angus is sure the loophole to this contract will be somewhere in the library. If there are things the twins are trying to learn, then there are limits to what they know right now; if Angus can find those limits, he can use them.

So maybe he can go home. But he has to hurry.

Angus pushes himself onto his tiptoes, looking at Barry’s work at the desk. Barry twists a dripping red quill between his fingers, chewing his lip. “Sir,” Angus asks, and Barry jumps, leaving a large black stain of ink on the desk in front of him. “Could I have some paper and ink, please?” Barry blinks, so he adds, “I’m bored. Can I draw?”

“Oh. Yeah, sure,” Barry says. He shoves the quill and its accompanying inkwell into Angus’s hands dismissively. “There’s paper in the drawer by the door. Just try not to overuse it, alright? It’s annoying to make.”

Angus nods. “Alright, sir.” 

“Don’t make a mess, either.”

As Angus gathers his supplies and scurries out of the room, the only remaining acknowledgement from Barry is the light that extinguishes silently beside him when he crosses the threshold of the door. He settles back on the floor in front of the fireplace and spreads the parchment flat in front of him. 

If fae power is linked with location and territory, there are borders on Taako’s magic. The easiest way to counter him will be to find those borders and memorize them. 

So he has to make a map.

Angus has never read a book about cartography because Grandpa never owned one, but there was a lot of information about it in _Caleb Cleveland and the Map of Wave Echo Cave._  All mapmaking really entails is determining the distance between recognized landmarks. If he keeps Taako’s tree as his main reference point, it will draw itself from there.

Angus dips his quill into the ink and carefully paints a small tree in the center of the page, labeled in small, neat lettering: _Taako and Lup’s Tree_. 

He came to Taako’s tree from the South, which means Taako’s territory expands pretty far in that direction. When he manages to get outside, he’ll try going North first. He draws a careful compass in the map’s corner and adds a tiny door to the Southern side of the tree. 

“What are you doing?” asks a voice behind him, and Angus scrambles to cover his work with a new sheet of parchment, then panics and dips his hands into the inkwell, smearing ink over the page. It’s covered in bizarre, abstract shapes as Taako steps closer and leans over his shoulder, sneering.

“I’m, um, drawing, sir,” Angus tells him. He wonders if Taako can sense the tension holding his body upright like a wire. “Mr. Barry said it was okay.”

“Huh. What is it?”

“It’s, um…” Angus squints at the page. There’s a broad triangular shape near the top, and two small fingerprints that almost seem like beady eyes. “...You?”

Taako coughs, then stands upright, adjusting the brim of his hat primly. “It’s terrible,” he says. He flicks his wrist and the ink evaporates from Angus’s hands. “Put that shit away and come help me with dinner.”

Taako pulls him into the kitchen; he waves a hand absently and the nooks and crannies of the room rumble in greeting, glowing softly in purples and yellows, emanating heat. The kitchen at work feels oppressively alive; its heat sends beads of sweat down Angus’s back, trailing along his spine. Taako coaxes a wave of purple out from one hole and plops it on the counter, moving a heavy, full pot on top. “Keep that boiling,” he mutters, and the purple hums in response.

Angus is cut off before he can speak. “Come ‘ere,” Taako instructs him, so he stops staring at the purple thing and follows to the other end of the room, where Taako taps a pile of potatoes and changes them to chiles. “Need you to cut the tops off of these and shake the seeds out, okay?” 

“Really?” Angus asks, then backtracks. “I mean, I don’t mind, sir, I just-”

“If you don’t mind then do it,” Taako says with a snort. He pulls a thin knife from the air and presses the handle into Angus’s hand. “I gotta look after the pork.”

Angus frowns, but Taako is already turning his back, so he takes a chile from the pile and starts to work. He’s never used a real, sharpened kitchen knife before, but he imagines it can’t be any more dangerous than what he’s already done. He makes a cut slowly and uneasily, but no disasters occur, so he shakes the seeds away and tries again. After a few minutes, he seems to catch a rhythm and almost forgets Taako is there until he hears the dull clatter of the pot being moved and glances over.

“Sir?” Angus asks. Taako hums his acknowledgement as he strains the broth from his pork. Angus shakes the seeds from the chile in his hand, watching them topple onto the countertop. “You don’t eat, right?”

“Nope.” Taako sets the broth aside and waves Angus closer, quickly running a damp cloth over his chile-laced fingers. “Switching jobs, bubeleh. This is easier for you.” He drags a stool over with his foot for Angus to stand at counter height, then directs him, “Just shred this pork up with your fingers, I’ll go put the hominy on and then take care of the chile stuff…”

Angus watches him. “Why do you know how to cook if you don’t need food?”

“A guy’s allowed to have hobbies,” Taako grumbles. “Why do you talk so much if you’re just a dumb baby?”

“I’m not a baby, sir.”

“Yes, I’ve been informed.” A white membrane flickers across Taako’s eyes, and he leans down to watch an orange blob he’s conjuring on the countertop, adjusting it with careful fingers. “Watch your mouth before I dump you on Barold again.”

Angus laughs. The pork shreds easily in his fingers. At home, Angus never cooked; his grandfather was a strong proponent of takeout and Kraft mac n’ cheese, and especially as it became difficult for him to walk, to use his hands, to get out of bed at all. He was told his father liked to cook, though. There were always cookbooks on their bookshelf at home. Angus has even flipped through a few of them.

“We’re making pozole,” he says, slipping a piece of pork into his mouth while Taako fiddles with the hominy. “It’s Mexican food. The ingredients don’t grow around here naturally, so no one living here would make up the recipe. Where’d you learn to make it?”

“How do you know all that?”

“Read it in a book, sir.”

“Oh, look at the little Einstein here, _reading_ ,” Taako says with a snarl. He whirls around to work on the chiles, his cloak billowing behind him. “I don’t remember, I picked it up from some passing human or something. Been a long time.”

Angus tilts his head curiously. “I thought you didn’t like to deal with humans.”

“Well this is different.”

“Why?”

“Less talking and more shredding, little man.”

Angus shrugs and returns to the work he’s been given. He works slowly, and by the time he’s finished Taako has a mixture of veggies resting in hot water on the other side of the counter. “I’m done, sir,” he announces, and Taako comes over to examine his work. He nods. “What should I do now?”

“Don’t care, I don’t need you anymore,” Taako tells him. He sweeps the shredded pork into a neat pile and waves Angus away, then pauses. “Actually, stay on deck. You know how to dice vegetables, right?”

“No, sir.”

“What? I thought Barry said you were old. Yeah, you’re useless to me.” Taako pauses then, and one ear flops down in a curious gesture. He wraps his hand around Angus’s chin and tilts his head upward, biting his lip. “Huh.”

“S-sir?”

“Alright. Go back to - what were you doing, drawing? Go make something that doesn’t look like ass this time.” 

Angus dislikes the way Taako is looking at him now, eyes rolling in his head as they scan over Angus’s body, dark and unreadable. He skitters out of the room without saying goodbye, and the only thing that follows is the faint sounds of Taako in the kitchen, knives hissing against the countertop, footsteps treading on the wood floor.

...

Angus sprawls on the floor of the tree, twisting his curls through his fingers. Behind him, the fairies chatter while Barry struggles to tuck a pile of books under one arm. Angus sighs, achingly full, and scoots closer to the fireplace, carefully unfolding the notes from his pocket. 

The notes have proven to be a welcome distraction when Taako gets tired of him; he’d stared at it over his dinner, and intermittently since, attempting to squeeze any kind of meaning from the alien script. The lettering is small, cramped and completely foreign to him - elaborate strokes, complex characters. Primordial. Of course the fae would have their own language, but why do Taako and Lup use English out loud? He can hardly imagine it’s for his sake. Is this language defunct? How old are Lup and Taako, then?

He squints at the papers in his hands. If the twins use this language out loud, he can start to discern meaning, but then he has to convince them to use it - and even if they do, he won’t know this alphabet. He needs something directly translated, unless... 

Unless.

He holds the paper closer to the light, illuminating it in orange. One of the characters is all flickering edges, a cartoonish impression of the fire behind it.

Unless Primordial is _pictographic_.

Angus gasps with delight, and then has to swallow the sound before he draws attention from the fairies talking nearby. He grips the paper tightly. If these characters are pictographic, he won’t need a translation at all; he’ll just need a creative eye and some patience. It very well may take longer than he’d like, but there’s some chance of learning more.

Behind him, Barry takes one last book from Taako and maneuvers around their dangling trinkets, toward the wall. Angus pauses to watch the three of them still deep in conversation. Lup clings to Barry's arm, talking animatedly, her feet drifting off the ground in her enthusiasm, and Barry’s eyes are locked on hers. When he leaves, they will have to open the door for him. The tree will have an exit again. Stark against the possibility of dedicating months to decode Lup's library, the opportunity screams for attention.

He stares down at the note in his hands. Yes, there may be an answer here, but he  _knows_ there’s one outside in the depths of the woods. 

Carefully, Angus folds his papers until they’re small enough to fit in the pockets of his jeans, running his fingers over the creases while the fairies finish their conversation. He watches. Lup rests her hand affectionately on Barry’s shoulder, then stretches onto her tiptoes and taps the wall. From her touch, the black opening ripples outward. The room is filled by the snapping, crackling noise of the tree splintering open. Angus swallows the instinct to stay put, a residual impulse from the afternoon, and stands. 

As a kid, he had meticulously researched anything that ever frightened or delighted him; he had developed an encyclopedic knowledge of everything around him, the house and its woods. Research isn't what Caleb Cleveland did, because there was never time. Caleb Cleveland, like all heroes, found a hunch and acted on it.

“Catch ya next time, baby,” Lup says, kissing Barry’s cheek. 

Angus runs.

His blood rushes in his ears, almost drowning out the sound of Lup’s loud _hey_ _, kid!_ behind him. As he crashes into the opening of the tree, he can feel his body compressed again with the weight of breaking through to the woods. On the other side, he lands on his knees, but scrabbles to his feet and keeps going.

The sun hangs low in the sky, painting the forest in a dark, colorful wash. No one follows behind him. He wraps around to the tree's opposite side and tramples into the forest; though he’s slowed by the dense foliage, he crashes through in an adrenaline-induced haze for a long while before he finally settles back to a walk.

Nobody chases him; nothing but his pounding footsteps interrupts the clear evening silence. Maybe the twins don’t actually care if he leaves and he just looked incredibly stupid.

The woods are cloaked in deep purple shadows, and he can almost hear the breeze whistling past him. The muddy ground sucks on his shoes. He steps over a shallow root, then pauses, feeling a strange warmth crawling up his spine.

This is the border. He recognizes it, intrinsically, as easily and confidently as he recognizes sunshine.

Angus stands at the far side of the root, adjusting to the phantom absence of Taako’s magic over him. The sunset doesn’t quite penetrate here; it’s almost darker than Taako’s woods are. He tries to memorize any landmarks denoting this spot but he can barely see. There’s a faint black mist covering his feet, and he shuffles to avoid sinking deeper into the mud that tugs for his attention underfoot.

Angus presses onward, through trees that increasingly seem to bend and loom over the narrow pathway, interlocking to block even the faintest glimmer of the sunset. The black fog thickens and curls further up his shins, licking at his kneecaps. He fights the temptation to hold his breath to stop inhaling it.

He isn’t sure how long he walks, but it doesn’t feel long before his joints are straining and his throat is burning. Something is deeply wrong. Angus is so wrapped in the discomfort he almost doesn’t notice the hand that drops onto his shoulder and the soft, feminine voice that murmurs to him:

“Oh, dear. I hope you haven’t had too much trouble navigating the wilds.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lol too much setup, this chapter was a pain. but there's fun stuff ahead~  
> I forgot to mention this last time, but this fic was partly inspired by @SparkleDragons and @Tanacetum's blupjeans fae AU "Of Fairies and Fungus," so if you're looking for more stuff to read, check it out!  
> leave a comment or kudos to make my day!


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